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Most of the existing diagnosis techniques for interturn short circuits (ITSCs) in switched reluctance motors (SRMs) suffer from three major issues. 1) The problem of lower sensitivity where the system cannot detect an ITSC if a lower number of turns are short-circuited; 2) Interference of load variation on the detection reliability in which the fault index might initiate false alarm without any fault; 3) The dependency of the diagnosis system on the control strategy on which the motor is operating. This article proposes a novel method to diagnose ITSCs in SRMs independent of control schemes with better sensitivity and reliability using the signal injection technique. In SRMs, not all the phases take part in the torque production at any instant. The idle or inactive phase is injected with a high-frequency (HF) voltage signal for a preselected injection ratio within an electrical cycle. Any change in the winding parameters owing to an ITSC fault is deciphered by monitoring the HF currents generated in the phase windings. The results are validated experimentally for a four-phase 8/6 SRM employing two control strategies: 1) chopped current control and 2) angle position control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a wireless resolver is proposed and implemented for wireless switched reluctance (SR) motors, which can detect the rotor position and transfer the information to the primary side without involving any battery storage or active components at the secondary side. The key is to integrate wireless power transfer (WPT) into a variable reluctance resolver to detect and transmit the rotor position. Compared with previous wireless SR motors adopting the Hall effect position encoder and Bluetooth communication, the robustness is highly improved, and the communication delay caused by the connection interval can be solved. Therefore, the proposed system takes the definite advantages of better dynamic performance and sealability. Besides, there is no need to specially design the SR motor, as all existing SR motors and other similar kinds of motors can readily employ this wireless resolver. An experimental prototype has been built for verification, which works well from 100 to 900 rpm with 20 mm WPT distance, and the additional power for position detection can be limited to 1.05 W while the motor consumes 54 W. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their robustness and adaptability, position estimators based on the extended Kalman filter have been used in permanent magnet synchronous motors for decades. The time has come to extend their use to reluctance motors as well and this work focuses on the elements that hinder the transition. All passes through the availability of an accurate and analytical magnetic model, which is obtained by Artificial Intelligence tools. It is proved that the sensorless control of synchronous reluctance motors using the extended Kalman filter is possible over broad speed and torque ranges. The experimental session compares different implementation possibilities, concluding with the proposal of a new hybrid algorithm that greatly reduces the computational load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trend in the industrial power electronics electrical drives is to reach high power density and high efficiency in variable load conditions at cost-effective unwasteful designs. Currently, motors with permanent magnets (such as IPMSM and PMaSynRM) are of great interest because of compactness, low losses, and high-torque capability. The performance of a drive system can be predicted with a motor electromagnetic authentic nonlinear model. In this article, a novel, fast, and precise motor model of PMaSynRM based on virtual reluctance (VR) is proposed. It takes into account the cross saturation, winding distribution, space harmonics, slotting effect, and stepped skewing. The VRs are identified by finite element analysis (FEA) and implemented in the time-stepping simulation. The flux inversion is not required. The proposed concept is useful in the rotating field or phase quantities (for open phase simulation). The model is also discretized for SiL and HiL applications. Finally, the validation in FEA and experimental setup was performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicle to vehicle (V2V) energy sharing is emerging as an alternate solution to range anxiety and limited charging infrastructure challenges associated with electric vehicles (EVs). The existing off-board dc fast charging options for V2V application found in the literature are not effective due to the additional weight, size and cost of the external charger or interface. In this article, a new V2V interface is proposed in which both EV’s motor winding neutrals and negative rails of on-board drivetrains are directly connected to each other. This further helps in forming an integrated dual bidirectional dc–dc converter to control the direction of power flow. The proposed approach does not require reconfiguration of motor winding or mechanical clutch to arrest the motor from rotating and/or the reconfiguration of drivetrain inverter connections. The major hardware requirement for the proposed approach is, access to the already existing neutral connection of the EV motor phase windings. To achieve dc fast charging, all three-legs of voltage source inverter of energy Provider-EV are switched using interleaved pulsewidth modulation. Furthermore, finite element analysis is presented for 150 kW EV motor model and its performance validation with the high frequency dc current flowing in the motor windings during the V2V operation. A scaled lab prototype is developed to demonstrate the energy sharing between two Lithium-ion battery banks through the proposed direct V2V power transfer concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes and implements an integrated wireless motor system using the laminated magnetic coupler (LMC) and commutative-resonant control (CRC). Prominently, a unique wireless power transfer system is developed to directly drive the switched reluctance motor (SRM) over an extendable distance with all controls centralizing in the transmitter. Differing from the multifrequency wireless motor system, the proposed system first employs the single resonant frequency to wirelessly drive a multiphase SRM through the single power transfer channel. Particularly, two orthogonal bipolar coils and one unipolar coil are skillfully integrated and naturally decoupled to form an LMC which acts as the transmitter, intermediate, and receiver coils, respectively. By utilizing the CRC to sequentially energize coils in the transmitter, the SRM phase windings can be properly excited by relevant coils in the receiver, which takes the distinct advantages of balanced phase currents, flexible transfer distance, high integration, and free maintenance. A prototype is constructed with the system efficiency of 89.14% and motor speed of 1500 rpm under the distance of 200 mm. Both theoretical and experimental results are provided to validate the feasibility of the proposed system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a phase-shifting fault-tolerant control (PS-FTC) method with single-phase current sensor is proposed for primary permanent-magnet linear motor traction system. The phase with healthy sensor is defined as the first phase, while the other two phases without healthy sensors are, respectively, defined as the second and third phases. In PS-FTC, hysteresis current control is adopted. The actual currents of the second and third phases are replaced by the estimated values, while the reference values are obtained by phase shifting of the estimated first-phase current. Although the linear motor parameters have been used in the calculation of the estimated currents, the parameter variations do not affect the performances of PS-FTC. Compared with the conventional fault-tolerant control (C-FTC) method and the existing fault-tolerant control schemes with single-phase current sensor, PS-FTC is robust and shows better steady-state performances. Furthermore, a hybrid strategy combining PS-FTC and C-FTC is adopted to improve the transient-state performances. The effectiveness of PS-FTC and the hybrid strategy are verified by the theoretical analysis and experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Model-based sensorless field-oriented control (FOC) suffers from overparameterization and can be laborious to use for a five-phase permanent magnet synchronous motor. On the other hand, insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) frequently fails in an electric drive. Under IGBT failure, a freewheeling current is observed, and, above all, it carries the failed phase back electromotive force information. Based on this observation, this article presents the design of a brand new sensorless FOC by exploiting the freewheeling current to accommodate both IGBT and position sensor failures, which is expected to further enhance the drive's fault-tolerant capability. The mathematical model of this current is first established to provide a theoretical basis and a comprehensive understanding of the presented sensorless FOC. By virtue of this model, a second-order generalized integrator with a frequency-locked loop can be used as a simple and elegant way to extract position/speed estimates. Experimental results are provided to validate the proposed sensorless FOC philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this article is the design of high efficiency electric motors adopted in power drive systems (PDS). The last efficiency standards are considered as constraint for the motor and drive design: they are introduced and described and their impact on the choice made during the design process are highlighted. As a particular case, the perspective of a motor manufacturer is adopted in order to understand which is the proper efficiency level of the motor required to fulfil the efficiency requirements of the PDS. This is not always clear and easy to understand because different standards apply in the two contexts. A design example of an industrial motor with 3 kW power is included, showing also experimental results on a prototypes. Also the standards related to the experimental tests, in particular those prescribing instrument accuracy, are considered and commented in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a wireless shaded-pole induction motor (SPIM) is proposed and implemented, which artfully integrates wireless power transfer into a single-phase SPIM to achieve the first wireless ac motor. Prominently, there is no controller at the SPIM side, as the controlling process is fully conducted at the transmitter side. Meanwhile, there is no need to specially design the motor, as all existing SPIMs can readily be used. The key is to propose a self-driving circuit in the receiver, which can provide variable-voltage variable-frequency control of the SPIM. As a result, the proposed wireless SPIM takes the definite advantages of electrocution-free and totally sealable. A 110 W prototype has been built for experimental verification. It can offer wireless speed control from 486 to 1330 r/min with the transfer distance of 30 mm and the transmission efficiency of 86.2%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with an improved control for synchronous reluctance motor (SyRM)-based photovoltaic (PV) water pumping system, eliminating the speed controller of position sensorless field-oriented control (FOC) of SyRM. The solar water pump drive involves two stages of power conversion. The reference quadrature axis current of FOC is estimated from available PV array power that is being continuously tracked for maximum power point. This eliminates the requirement of an additional speed controller. This improves the transient behavior of overall control under dynamic conditions such as varying solar radiation. A pole is eliminated from overall characteristic equation of open-loop dc link voltage control transfer function. As a result, a single proportional integrator controller satisfactorily controls the whole pumping system. The system is much easier to tune, and by default, immune to aging and variation in pump's constant. This improves fidelity and reduces the overall cost of the system. Performance of this system is validated through a developed laboratory prototype of solar PV array-fed SyRM drive for water pumping. The overall system performance is examined under different environmental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An integrated motor-drive and battery- (IMB) charging system based on the split-field-winding doubly salient electromagnetic machine (DSEM) is proposed in this article, where field winding of DSEM is integrated as the filter inductance of the front-end dc–dc converter. In the driving mode, the coupling relationship between the front-end dc–dc converter and rear-end inverter for DSEM is deduced, and the corresponding basic control method is given to achieve independent control of the front-end dc–dc converter and rear-end inverter based on the power balance of the cascade converter. Due to the constraints analysis of the IMB system in the dynamic procedure, an optimized triloop control strategy of speed, power, and dual-threshold voltage is proposed to improve output performance. Finally, the simulation model and experimental platform are established to verify the effectiveness and the steady and dynamic performance of the IMB system with the proposed driving control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amorphous magnetic materials (AMMs) have been commercially available for decades. However, their application to electrical machines still lacks of breakthrough progress. This article proposes to use the AMM for a high-speed interior permanent-magnet rotor to avoid sleeves. In this application, advantages of the high mechanical strength, the low core losses, and the relatively low-saturation flux density of the AMM are fully taken. In order to ensure the success of the proposed application, three important aspects: slotting, electromagnetic properties, and mechanical strength of the AMM are experimentally studied. Since the electromagnetic properties of the AMM core are sensitive to the mechanical process, stress, and temperature, the AMM cores are tested and the tested data are used for the motor design. Finally, a prototype is built and tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2-degree-of-freedom direct drive induction motor (2DoFDDIM) is capable of implementing rotary linear or helical motion, which has the definite advantages of integrated structure, high material utilization, and so on. In this paper, the characteristics analysis of the three kinds of motions is presented. The air-gap magnetic field distributions and mechanical characteristics of the 2DoFDDIM with three motions are derived respectively. The results show that there is super synchronous speed or velocity phenomenon for rotary or linear motion. Moreover, the coupling effects between the rotating and travelling wave magnetic fields and that between the two mechanical motions will deteriorate the performance of the three-dimensional (3-D) helical motion compared with the two-dimensional (2-D) motion (rotary or linear). The expressions of the resistant torque and force caused by the coupling effect are derived, which are verified by 3-D finite-element models (FEMs). The results regarding the weakening of the output torque of helical motion and interacting magnetic field obtained from FEMs are then verified by experimental tests. Finally, the skewed slot method is applied to 2DoFDDIM, which successfully improves the performance of helical motion aiming to compensate the coupling resistant torque and force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a PM pole with varied width in the axial direction for vibration mitigation in permanent magnet brush dc motors, which is proposed to decrease the deformation caused by radial pulsating force and bending moment together. First, the air gap flux density distribution and radial force density distribution are derived in detail. After two types of vibration modes and their reasons as pulsating force and bending moment are analyzed, the difficulty in vibration mitigation is pointed out. By investigating the change rule of the pulsating force and bending moment with PM pole width, a type of PM pole with varied width in the axial direction is proposed. Its principle of deformation reduction is presented, and the optimized pole shape is derived. A three-dimensional finite-element method is used to calculate the magnetic field, Maxwell force, modal analysis, and deformation of motors. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, the vibration of the proposed motor is compared with the other three types of traditional motors, including skewing slot or skewing pole. Finally, experimental results of two types of motors are compared to validate the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reveals a torque-angle approaching principle in a hybrid rotor permanent-magnet (HRPM) motor. The key is to obtain the relationship between angles of shifted surface-inserted PMs (SPMs) as well as assisted airspace barriers and the current angles of maximum PM torque as well as maximum reluctance torque. In order to find out this relationship, the PM torque and reluctance torque are separated accurately and effectively by the proposed torque separation method. In this method, the parameters in anabcreference frame are transformed to ad--qreference frame via Park transformation, and then the model considering cross-coupling and magnetic saturation effect is used to calculate four torque components. Moreover, the shifting of SPMs has been confirmed to have both influence on the current angles of maximum PM torque and maximum reluctance torque, while the assisted airspace barriers only affect the current angle of maximum reluctance torque. Thus, the total torque can be enhanced by optimal angles of shifted SPMs and assisted airspace barriers because of higher utilization of both PM torque and reluctance torque. In order to evaluate the presented principle in the HRPM motor, a prototype is manufactured for experiments. Through theoretical analysis and experimental testing, it is verified that the proposed principle is feasible and effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linear switched reluctance motors (LSRMs) provide an alternative to linear induction motor and linear permanent magnet motor in both vertical and horizontal propulsion applications. This paper attempts to develop a unitized design method of a segmental secondary LSRM, which is characterized by a modular magnetic circuit structure and the independent operation of multimover units. The developed design method is directly performed in linear domain without transforming it to a rotary SRM, which complies with the essential natures of the segmental secondary LSRM, showing that it is capable of delivering more power at the same dimensions compared to the conventional tooth type LSRM. Further, the sensitivity analysis of the critical geometric parameters is performed, and the guidelines for selection of the best dimension parameters are given. Finally, the three-phase and four-phase LSRMs are designed and prototyped, respectively with a 1-m long stator. The experimental results validate the design procedures and analysis above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a simple and cost-effective current measurement technique for four-phase switched reluctance motor (SRM) control, by splitting the dual bus line of the converter, without pulse injection and voltage penalty. Only two Hall-effect sensors are utilized, where one is installed in the upper bus to measure two phase currents, and the other is placed in the lower bus to measure other two phase currents. In order to realize independent current measurement in the whole turn-on region, switching functions are redesigned so that upper switches of two phases act as the choppers, while lower switches of the other two phases are employed as the choppers. Compared to traditional drives, the developed system requires only two Hall-effect sensors in the dual bus line, without a need for individual phase sensors or additional devices, which reduces the cost and volume for SRM drives. Furthermore, compared to the single-sensor based current measurement scheme, the proposed method has no need to implement pulse injection and will not cause any voltage penalty and current distortion, which also improve the current measurement accuracy and system performance. Simulation and experiments carried out on a 150-W four-phase 8/6 SRM confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Line-start synchronous motors (LSSMs) have been recently introduced in the motor market to meet the new efficiency class requirements. They exhibit high efficiency and power factor compared with induction motors (IMs), but the complex design, manufacture, and high cost due to presence of permanent magnets (PM) limit their widespread use. This paper proposes a new approach for the design of LSSMs, in which an important torque contribution is given by the reluctance torque component. Both steady-state and dynamic capabilities are considered. A stochastic optimization is used to determine the parameters that maximize the synchronous torque. The possibility to apply the recent improvements on the synchronous reluctance machine design to LSSMs is discussed. Experimental measurements are carried out on an LSSM prototype achieved from the optimization. The results are compared with the predictions. Two different PM volumes are tested in the same rotor structure, evaluating their impact on motor performance. From the experimental tests, an overview comparison between the IM and LSSM performance is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To overcome the drawbacks of conventional linear flux-switching permanent-magnet (FSPM) motors split directly from the rotary FSPM motor, the topology, operation principle, and static thrust performances of a new series of complementary and modular linear FSPM (CMLFSPM) motors with different mover/stator pole pitch ratio have been investigated. However, the existing researches mainly focus on the principle and static performance of this MLFSPM motor. In this paper, the closed-loop speed control performance of this kind of motor based on primary flux-oriented control is investigated. First, the research status of linear FSPM motor is introduced. Second, the mathematical model in the $dq$ coordinate and the control scheme of a CMLFSPM motor are presented. Then, the proposed control strategies of the CMLFSPM motor are verified by using MATLAB/Simulink. Finally, the experiments on a prototype of the proposed motor are carried out to validate the study of closed-loop speed control. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Motor current signature analysis (MCSA) based on the 50/60-Hz sidebands has become a common test in industry for monitoring the condition of the induction motor rotor cage. However, many cases of unnecessary motor inspection or outage due to false alarms produced by rotor axial duct interference have been reported. If the number of axial ducts and poles is identical, this can produce 50/60-Hz sideband frequency components in MCSA that overlap with that of rotor faults, resulting in false alarms. However, there currently is no practical test method available for distinguishing rotor faults and false indications other than testing the rotor offline or under the startup transient. In this paper, the feasibility of using the rotor fault frequency component produced by the space harmonic waves is evaluated as a solution for the first time. Since the fifth or seventh space harmonics have a spatial distribution of flux that does not penetrate in the rotor yoke to reach the axial ducts, they do not produce false alarms. The proposed method is verified on 6.6-kV motors misdiagnosed with broken bars via the 50/60-Hz sidebands of MCSA. It is shown that it provides reliable online indication of rotor faults independent of axial duct influence and can be used for screening out false alarms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A switched reluctance motor has been designed with identical outer dimensions, maximum torque, operating area, and maximum efficiency as rare-earth permanent-magnet motors used in the Toyota Prius. In this paper, a test machine has been constructed, and test results are presented over the entire speed range. The targets are torque of 207 \N\cdot\m, a shaft output of 60 kW, and the maximum efficiency of 96%, as well as a speed range of 2768–13 900 r/min with an output of 60 kW and an outer diameter and an axial length of 264 and 112 mm, respectively. It is found that a shaft output of 100 kW is possible at high rotational speed under the voltage and current ratings. The possible operation area in a torque–speed plane is found to be enhanced. It is also found that the design stage prediction is close to the test results, except in two operation regions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hybrid and electric vehicle technology has seen rapid development in recent years. The motor and the generator are at the heart of the vehicle drive and energy system and often utilize expensive rare-earth permanent magnet (PM) material. This paper reviews and addresses the research work that has been carried out to reduce the amount of rare-earth material that is used while maintaining the high efficiency and performance that rare-earth PM machines offer. These new machines can use either less rare-earth PM material, weaker ferrite magnets, or no magnets; and they need to meet the high performance that the more usual interior PM synchronous motor with sintered neodymium–iron–boron magnets provides. These machines can take the form of PM-assisted synchronous reluctance machines, induction machines, switched reluctance machines, wound rotor synchronous machines (claw pole or biaxially excited), double-saliency machines with ac or dc stator current control, or brushless dc multiple-phase reluctance machines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction to various articles published within the issue is presented including the design of a sports car's direct-driven interior permanent-magnet synchronous motors (IPMSMs), a claw-pole double-rotor synchronous machine and the electromagnetic sizing procedure for an electrical machine.

The high-speed (HS) electric machines are gaining attention in several different applications, and the development of advanced materials, electronic components, and control algorithms is pushing ahead the technological speed limits. In the electromagnetic sizing of HS machines, the mechanical and thermal involvements are very tight to make it necessary to deal with all the different aspects at the same time. This paper aims to summarize and discuss the electrical and the mechanical aspects involved in the HS machine design, highlighting the main issues and the tradeoffs that the designer has to consider. Furthermore, the correlation between volume reduction and speed increase, based on commercial high-frequency rotor–stator units, is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional linear flux-switching permanent-magnet (FSPM) motors directly split from a rotary FSPM motor suffer from drawbacks such as unbalanced magnetic circuit of end coil, bigger cogging force, and force ripple. In this paper, to reduce cogging force and thrust force ripple, some complementary and modular linear FSPM (LFSPM) (MLFSPM) motors with mover/stator pole pitch ratio \taum/\taus of about one, namely, \taum/\taus = 10/12, 11/12, 12/12, 13/12, 14/12, 15/12, will be investigated using finite-element method (FEM) and experimental method at first. Then, another new LFSPM motor with \taum/\taus =\break 3 is analyzed. Based on \taum/\taus = 3, some new MLFSPM motors are designed, investigated, and compared using FEM. To fully investigate these motors, the optimal MLFSPM motor with \taum/\taus = 3 is quantitatively compared with the two optimal motors with \taum/\taus \approx 1. Finally, the general design principle for this series of MLFSPM motors with different \taum/\taus values is concluded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Switched reluctance motors (SRMs) have ease of manufacturing, low cost, and robustness in withstanding centrifugal force advantages. Therefore, they are very suitable for high-speed applications. However, when running at high speeds, rapid braking becomes difficult because the regeneration energy may increase the dc-link voltage to a critical level if a diode rectifier bridge is used for ac–dc conversion. This paper investigates the relationship between the regeneration energy and the dc-link voltage and proposes an electric braking scheme employing two-phase excitations. During braking, instead of regenerating the excessive rotor kinetic energy back to the dc link, the energy is dissipated in the stator winding resistance. Therefore, the rotor can stop safely within a short time. The proposed control scheme is verified experimentally using a four-phase SRM. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, different analysis and design techniques are used to analyze the drive motor in the 2004 Prius hybrid vehicle and to examine alternative spoke-type magnet rotor (buried magnets with magnetization which is orthogonal to the radial direction) and induction motor arrangements. These machines are characterized by high transient torque requirement, compactness, and forced cooling. While rare-earth magnet machines are commonly used in these applications, there is an increasing interest in motors without magnets, hence the investigation of an induction motor. This paper illustrates that the machines operate under highly saturated conditions at high torque and that care should be taken when selecting the correct analysis technique. This is illustrated by divergent results when using I–Psi loops and dq techniques to calculate the torque. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents an overview of motor drive technologies used for safety-critical aerospace applications, with a particular focus placed on the choice of candidate machines and their drive topologies. Aircraft applications demand high reliability, high availability, and high power density while aiming to reduce weight, complexity, fuel consumption, operational costs, and environmental impact. New electric driven systems can meet these requirements and also provide significant technical and economic improvements over conventional mechanical, hydraulic, or pneumatic systems. Fault-tolerant motor drives can be achieved by partitioning and redundancy through the use of multichannel three-phase systems or multiple single-phase modules. Analytical methods are adopted to compare caged induction, reluctance, and PM motor technologies and their relative merits. The analysis suggests that the dual (or triple) three-phase PMAC motor drive may be a favored choice for general aerospace applications, striking a balance between necessary redundancy and undue complexity, while maintaining a balanced operation following a failure. The modular single-phase approach offers a good compromise between size and complexity but suffers from high total harmonic distortion of the supply and high torque ripple when faulted. For each specific aircraft application, a parametrical optimization of the suitable motor configuration is needed through a coupled electromagnetic and thermal analysis, and should be verified by finite-element analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety issue is a great concern for rehabilitation robots that are expected to contribute to future aging society. Appropriate compliance is required for their joints. However, combination of servomotors and high-ratio gears, such as harmonic gears, makes the joint of robots nonbackdrivable. The nonbackdrivability causes lack of adaptability and safety. On the other hand, conventional direct-drive systems, including linear motors, are relatively big for such application. This paper presents the development and analysis of compact high-backdrivable direct-drive linear actuator. The motor consists of a helical structure stator and mover. The mover does not contact the stator and moves helically in the stator under a proper magnetic levitation control. Thus, the motor realizes direct-drive motion without mechanical gears. Decoupling control is proposed and integrated with disturbance observer to achieve robustness against model uncertainties and input disturbance. The main contribution of this paper is to experimentally realize the direct-drive feature of the helical motor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a novel model reference adaptive control of five-phase interior-permanent-magnet (IPM) motor drives. The primary controller is designed based on an artificial neural network (ANN) to simulate the nonlinear characteristics of the system without knowledge of accurate motor models or parameters. The proposed motor drive decouples the torque and flux components of five-phase IPM motors by applying multiple-reference-frame transformation. Therefore, the motor can be easily driven below the rated speed with the maximum-torque-per-ampere operation or above the rated speed with the flux weakening operation. The ANN-based primary controller consists of a radial basis function network which is trained online to adapt system uncertainties. The complete IPM motor drive is simulated in Matlab/Simulink environment and implemented experimentally utilizing a dSPACE DS1104 controller board on a five-phase prototype IPM motor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a simple but effective method to reduce the torque ripple for direct torque control (DTC) of induction motor drives. The proposed DTC provides a global minimum torque ripple, which satisfies the root-mean-square (rms) criteria of torque ripple. Such a global minimum torque ripple DTC has not been derived before. The proposed global minimum torque ripple DTC is a two-step design. The first step drives the torque error to zero at the end of the control period. Then, the second step reduces the torque bias and rms ripple by modifying the asymmetry switching patterns of the applied voltage vectors of the first step into symmetry ones. Theoretical analysis is provided to show that the torque ripple of the proposed DTC is a global minimum rms ripple. Furthermore, to verify the effectiveness of this study, a DSP-based experimental induction motor DTC drive system is built. Simulation and experimental results verify that the torque ripple performance has been improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linear switched reluctance motors (LSRMs) for the primary propulsion of a ship elevator is proposed and investigated for the first time in this paper. To achieve the stated objective, a new type of LSRM is proposed with twin stators and a translator between them with no back iron in the translator. The proposed configuration of the LSRM is designed, simulated, analyzed, compared with traditional LSRMs, and verified by experimental measurements. The number of LSRM propulsion subsystems required is studied with a view to minimize their weights and an optimization study for that purpose is developed. Unique placement of the LSRM propulsion systems on the elevator is presented. The propulsion force is generated using one phase or multiphase excitation. To reduce propulsion force pulsations, a major requirement in elevators, controlled multiphase excitation using one of the known force distribution functions (FDF) is an acceptable solution. In this paper, it is proved that the currently available FDFs are able to reduce the force pulsations but are not able to meet the peak force command for the system. Consequently, the velocity and position control do not meet even the elementary performance requirements any more. A new FDF is proposed in this paper and presented to overcome the problem caused by a conventional FDF. The control system with the proposed FDF is derived and integrated into velocity and position controllers. Extensive dynamic simulation and experimental verification of the proposed LSRM with the novel FDF is proved to give superior performance in this paper. Such high performance capable of meeting vertical elevator applications is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]